Police Question A Jewish Lawyer Over Wearing A Star Of David Necklace

A Jewish lawyer was questioned by police after wearing a Star of David necklace, which officers claimed ‘antagonised’ pro-Palestine supporters during a demonstration.

Officers questioned the man at Hammersmith Police Station in west London over the silver 2cm Judaic symbol after he was arrested for alleged Public Order breaches on August 29.

At one point, the questioning detective says officers noted in their statements that they believed the ‘presence’ of the Star of David could cause ‘offence’ to those who had gathered at the protest.

The lawyer, a man in his 40s, was arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, where a pro-Palestine march had descended that evening.

However, the Metropolitan Police say he had allegedly ‘gone beyond observing to provoking’ pro-Palestinian supporters and was arrested on suspicion of violating conditions that had been put in place to keep opposing protest groups apart.

The man was then reportedly detained for almost 10 hours at the station before being released at about 4.30 am the following day.

The Met say their investigation into the incident is continuing. Still, the lawyer – who has chosen to remain anonymous over fears for his safety – has accused the police of trying to ‘criminalise the wearing of a Star of David’.

Talking to The Telegraph, who obtained the police interview footage, the man furiously labelled the police questioning as ‘outrageous’, saying that the force ‘crossed the line’ to mention his wearing of the Judaic symbol.

He said: ‘They [the police] are trying to criminalise the wearing of a Star of David. They said I was antagonising and agitating pro-Palestine protesters with my Star of David. In an environment of anti-Semitism, I will not be cowed by this. I will carry on wearing it.’

In a statement, police said the man was not arrested for wearing the necklace, but that he had allegedly ‘continuously approached the area’ allocated to the pro-Palestinian protestors on the evening, which in turn provoked a reaction.

Footage of the police interview shows the detective asking the man what necklace he was wearing, subsequently adding that officers in their statements thought that the Star of David being on display was ‘antagonising’ the situation further.

The man’s defence labelled the officer’s statements as ‘ignorant’ and said he had a ‘great deal of concern’ with the line of questioning.

The detective said he did not want to offend by asking the question, adding that it was not a question about the man wearing the Star of David generally, but in a ‘very niche environment where tensions are high’. 

He then said that he did not want ‘this to become a political debate in an interview’.

The arrested lawyer says he has witnessed dozens of instances of alleged criminal behaviour while observing pro-Palestine protests, during which he claims to have been labelled a ‘baby killer’.

He said that those chants going unpunished, while he is questioned over his wearing of the Star of David, is ‘one of the clearest examples of two-tier policing you will ever see’, and denies any wrongdoing on the night he was arrested.

The protest at the embassy in August was also observed by Gill Levy, who served with the Met Police for 20 years, and set up the Society of Independent Legal Observers with the arrested lawyer and a third man, a Jewish KC.

Mr Levy told the newspaper he was ‘distraught’ by his acquaintance’s arrest, adding:  ‘When I was an officer, I was always thinking about the reputation of the police, and how I could ensure what I was doing did not expose the organisation to risk. 

‘This arrest beggars belief. I am part of this Jewish tribe, but I am also part of the police tribe, and for them to have let me down like this is heartbreaking.’

A Metropolitan Police spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘The claim that this man was arrested for wearing a Star of David necklace is not true. He was arrested for allegedly repeatedly breaching Public Order Act conditions that were in place to keep opposing protest groups apart.

‘The conditions required protesters from the pro-Israel group, Stop the Hate, to remain in one area while protesters from the pro-Palestinian group, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), were required to remain in a separate area.

‘The man told officers he was acting as a legal observer, but his actions are alleged to have gone beyond observing to provoking and, as such, actively participating as a protester.

‘Over the course of an hour, the man is alleged to have continuously approached the area allocated to IJAN, getting very close to protesters to film them and in doing so provoking a reaction. 

‘Officers had to intervene on at least four occasions to ask the man to return to the Stop the Hate area as required by the conditions.

‘When he failed to do so after multiple warnings, he was arrested. He was subsequently released on bail, and the investigation continues.’

This is so hard for me to understand, and what is really going on in 2025 – the fact is that this echoes the beginning of the Holocaust, and people need to wake up. It also emphasises the dangers of denial, misinformation and the need for education and action against hatred.

Is this 2025 or Nazi Germany 1930s? Seen recently in a shop window in Flensburg, Germany, ‘Jews are banned here.’

The isolation and dehumanisation of Jews in the manner of the Nazis, which predated the Holocaust, is again being replicated.

It’s clearly apparent on our streets. Now, all hate is personal.

It all began with Jews being spat upon on the street and vile remarks being shouted in the park. These remarks shocked, denigrated, and alienated people; worse, they sparked the horrifying slaughter of six million Jews.

People don’t just wake up one morning and decide that they are going to participate in mass murder. Hate speech, propaganda, antisemitism, and racism were the roots that culminated in genocide, and now, in 2025, it’s again happening right under our noses. People never learn, and they so easily forget.

Punch-ups Before Lessons

Without a doubt, the situation in our schools has gotten really bad.

Teachers are leaving the profession en masse, as they battle impossible workloads, toxic work environments, a ‘broken’ Special Educational Needs System, and surges in pupil brutality.

Earlier this year, the Teachers’ Union estimated there were 30,000 violent incidents involving a student attacking a teacher with a weapon in a 12-month period.

Children as young as four have been discovered in possession of knives, while some schools have installed metal detectors, or ‘knife arches’, in a bid to curb attacks.

In the meantime, walkouts about subpar working conditions and low pay have occurred nationwide, and teachers have experienced intimidation from upper management.

The Daily Mail interviewed a teacher who described what a typical day at their secondary school actually entails to learn more about the ongoing difficulties that schools around the United Kingdom face.

That teacher said that as they walk through the school entrance, they think of the £200 in their bank account and their ever-increasing student debt, and they stop momentarily to remind themselves why they do this job.

‘Let’s hope I get out of here on time for once,’ they mutter under their breath as they prepare for another day of chaos.

The thing is, teaching is only half the job these days.

Most of a teacher’s time and energy is taken up by filling out perpetual admin, uploading notes of each second of the day onto digital logs, and endeavouring to impose draconian ‘classroom management techniques’ which create an emotionally-stunted, robot generation.

Children are now being groomed into county line gangs. Fights are breaking out at least once a week, and expelled pupils from other schools are preying near the grounds in COVID face masks, the new unofficial balaclava, and most days, schools are just about holding on.

‘And now to add to it.’ The teacher said, ‘We’ve caught pupils, some of whom were before the summer golden, top set students, carrying knives on them ‘for protection’.

‘They are stealing blades from home, hiding them in the bushes in nearby parks, and even using them to rob people at knifepoint.

‘As I walk into the staffroom, I can’t help but think, if we just focused on getting these troubled children engaged in their lessons and show them they can have a chance in life, they wouldn’t so easily end up in the wrong circles.

‘A lot of them come from broken families and impoverished communities with little to no way of guidance apart from school.’

There are altercations before class, even before the teacher gets to the playground – hearing fierce screams by the students’ entrances.

The teacher knows immediately it’s not the typical squealing from overexcited youngsters back from the weekend. A fight has broken out already.

A teenager that they know is in a gang is fighting with a pupil with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

Without pausing to think, because the teacher doesn’t have that indulgence, the teacher runs over to stop them.

There is no other way in this moment to de-escalate the situation other than to restrain the pupil, who is now aggressively fighting the boy with mild autism, who is also fighting back.

He has become increasingly violent and erratic, at which point the teacher has to take hold of him using force.

‘There have been so many instances like this that could get me fired, but there is no way I am going to stand back and let pupils launch themselves at each other.

‘And if that requires physically restraining them and risking my job, then so be it.

‘The boy who is in a gang is a bright kid, full of potential. I know from the classes I’ve taught him, but he was recruited by a county lines gang just months ago. We carry out after-school patrols every evening to stop the grooming, but there’s only so much we can do, and some, unfortunately, do fall through the cracks.

‘The same gang that recruited him staged a robbery, or so we understand, so they could then tell him he owed them money. To make up for it, he has to steal phones and move drugs for them.

‘They always target the vulnerable kids.

‘Anyway, now he’s been humiliated by the pupil in front of the school, we know it won’t be let go so easily. He and his gang will be waiting for him on the way home, which will add to our after-school patrol job.

‘Students are shouted at to disperse to their next lessons as the fight has now been stopped, and the kids are taken indoors.

‘Of course, the problem is, while the fight may have ended, everything now goes up on TikTok straight away. 

‘One pupil, usually one of the quiet and ‘well-behaved’ ones, will have filmed it and it will probably go viral by lunch.

‘In fact, faceless TikTok accounts, mainly started up by the shy girls in the school, were caught last year posting content on who they would like to see fight next and who they want to see beaten up – and boys being boys, they go ahead and set up these fights to impress the girls.

‘They even uploaded vile and abusive posts about teachers in the assumption we wouldn’t be able to track them down.

‘But after looking at comments by hundreds of pupils, we were able to narrow it down to the kids who were taught by all the mentioned teachers. All we had to do was tell each of them we knew who it was, and the truth started spilling.

‘We were shocked to find one of the girls running the pages would never be caught misbehaving in school and had a golden record of zero detentions. 

‘Anyway, now we’re in lessons, there are a few hours of peace.

‘I love watching even the pupils we know are in gangs turn into nerdy kids when they become engaged in their lessons.

‘Some teachers seem to think it’s all about rigidly sticking to the guides provided to us from the powers that be, but I want my students to care about their work, to relate it to their lives, the society they live in.

‘And it means they actually do their work. I have students who are scoring top grades in my class coming to me in tears because they’ve been sent to detention for not sitting or nodding the right way.

‘Now it gets to lunch, we have to make sure all the year groups are kept apart in the playground.

‘But it is also the time to call up the parents of the pupils who were involved in the fight.

‘The boy who is affiliated with the gang should have been permanently expelled months ago, but endless red tape means that there are two categories of children who are virtually impossible to expel: pupils with SEND, and pupils who are classed as vulnerable and involved with social services.

‘If we expel him, there is the risk he will be completely taken in by the gang.

‘The boy with SEND is not without fault either, but again, the system makes it extremely difficult to discipline him. 

‘It is like these kids are void of responsibility, exactly the opposite of what we want to teach them.

‘There has been an explosion in kids with SEND since I first began teaching. A SEND overdose.

‘When I entered the profession about 15 years ago, there were about 15 teaching assistants (TAs) in the school I was teaching in, and hardly any pupils with special needs.

‘But over the last decade, and even more so after COVID, the number of kids with SEND has shot up exponentially.

‘Now, parents deliberately look to get their kids a SEND diagnosis, what we call an EHCP (Education Health and Care Plan), so that they are hard to expel.

‘Yet there are only half a dozen TAs, the least I have ever seen, and the strain is unbearable.

‘I think to myself as I make that call to the boys’ parents, ‘our state schools are being killed off.

‘To no surprise, the gang-affiliated boy’s parents were reluctant to acknowledge any fault on their son’s behalf, preferring instead to blame other children entirely for his ‘reaction’. Any conversation about taking responsibility for his behaviour fell on deaf ears.

‘This is nothing new. We are constantly battling parents who have even tried to sue us for discrimination for trying to discipline their kids.

‘Now that’s my lunch wasted, I’d better hurry up and get to the canteen to pick up whatever remains.

This is the state of our schools, even in the canteen – portion sizes have more than halved from when this teacher was at school, which he confesses was numerous years ago.

The teacher said that as they edge their way toward the end of the day, their hardest, and arguably most important job begins.

‘We call it chicken shop duty. But really, it’s manning all areas where kids congregate after school.

‘A few of us put on high-vis vests every evening and go to the chicken shops, the parks, the bus stops.

‘It has now become one of the most important things we can do. It is when the gangs recruit the kids, and it is when troublesome students who have been expelled from other schools turn up.

‘In the olden days, kids would turn up in uniform from other schools and fight. Inter-school fights. They were a big thing, horrible, violent.

‘That has gone now, but it has been replaced with permanently excluded kids from other schools turning up in tracksuits and face masks.

‘COVID face masks are being used by them as unofficial balaclavas to hide their identity.

‘And they come to these spots where students gather and try to influence them.

‘We try to move them on, but the problem with moving them on is that they often carry blades on them.

‘These are kids in county lines, these are kids in pupil referral units, essentially they are kids who are not in school.

‘And that can quickly become dangerous.’

What we need is to bring back rigid discipline in all schools, and our government needs to support teachers. This is all down to no punishment and ‘woke’ foolery.

It’s about time parents put down their phones and parented their children, and our government need to bring back the cane, it worked well when I was at school.

Some youngsters need a slap sometimes. My mother only had to give me ‘the look’ and I would shake because I knew that if I didn’t reel my neck in, I knew what was next.

This is what you get when you treat small children like little adults and set no boundaries.

Policing is non-existent, particularly when it comes to gangs of yobs on the street. Our police are more interested in arresting those who say what they believe in. It’s not the Metropolitan Police, it’s the metropolitan police of woke.

I went to school back in the 1970s. Back then, the odd fight would break out, but both parties were normally hauled into the head’s office, and we were severely dealt with, normally with the cane. Then the parents were notified, and when you got home, they would dole out their own punishment.

The issue is that children have been given far too many rights, and then we have the lazy parenting, and it’s been going on for decades, and what do we have now? Feral children, and what’s more, they know their rights. If you touch me, I’ll call social services or the police, so now, not only are parents lazy, they are scared of the repercussions.

Veterans’ Digital ID Cards Announced

Veterans are to be offered new digital cards in the first scheme of its kind, which could act as a ‘case study’ ahead of a proposed government rollout of mandatory online IDs for every UK citizen.

Starting today, veterans can use a government app to download a digital copy of their HM Armed Forces Veteran Card.

The new digital format is designed to give ex-military members fast and secure proof of service to enable them to access specialist support when registering with a GP, applying for housing support, or to confirm service for veteran discounts and concessions.

It is optional for all veterans and is being rolled out alongside the pre-existing physical card, which was first launched in 2018.

Some 1.8 million people in the UK are eligible for the scheme, with personnel only having to have served for one day in the forces to apply. About 300,000 veterans presently have an HM Armed Forces card.

Ian Murray, minister for digital government, said that the rollout of digital cards for veterans could demonstrate to the public how the credentials work and put to bed some of their fears over security.

The Labour MP for Edinburgh South said: ‘(It’s) probably a demonstration to the public by default, in that sense, on the basis that this is the first use case for having a digital credential on your smartphone, and that digital credential is the first sort of verifiable one that government have now launched.

‘So using a closed group like the 300,000 veterans [who already have a veterans card] is a really good case study to show that it does work.

‘And it will be very beneficial, it shows the technology works, that shows that we can prove and dispense with some of those legitimate concerns around privacy and security and those kinds of issues.’ 

But he said that the main purpose of the veteran card is to help former members of the armed forces access Government services and benefits.

‘The launch of this card is about making the lives of veterans easier, to access government services and the benefits of that card, rather than being about demonstrating the much wider issues that you talk about… in terms of digital ID,’ he said.

In time for Remembrance Day next month, the digital veteran card—the first online identification document ever issued by the British government—will go into effect.

Available through the government’s new Gov.uk one login app, the card will be immediately downloadable upon approval, saving veterans from having to wait weeks for a physical document to be manufactured and dispatched.

They will then be able to use it to demonstrate they are eligible for targeted support systems, such as mental and physical health schemes.

Mr Murray has reassured veterans that the card, which includes personal data including name, date of birth and the branch of the armed forces they have served in, is secure.

He told the Mail that safety and data protection were ‘at the heart’ of the scheme, pointing out that physical cards can be misplaced, stolen or defaced.

‘Having it on [a veteran’s] smartphone in this way means that they’ve got instant access to it, they can get it much quicker, and they can use it for verification purposes for anything they want to access,’ he said.

‘Of course, there’s a read across to digital ID, and it’s about that safety and security, but the key thing in terms of having that on your phone is you go through the UK One login app. 

‘There’s no data that transfers hands. What then happens, the app asks the MOD – who holds the data – is this person a veteran, and all that comes back is yes or no.’

The card will not be available to be added to an individual device’s wallet; instead, it needs to be accessed via the app after inputting a passcode or using face or fingerprint ID.

Individuals’ use of the card will not be tracked, and no new database to hold veterans’ personal data is being created.

The move marks a significant step in delivering the government’s ‘Blueprint for Modern Digital Government and Plan for Change’, aimed at making public services easier, speedier, and more convenient.

On what would be considered a victory for the scheme, Mr Murray said he hoped more of the UK’s veteran community would sign up for either a physical or digital card.

‘There are 1.8 million veterans in the UK, and this government really values veterans and wants to make their post-armed forces lives as easy as possible,’ he told the Mail.

‘You can have both, but it’s not a compulsory system. I would really like to just get those 1.3 million people who don’t have a veteran’s card much easier access to it. 

‘Some veterans don’t know they can have it, they don’t know the value of it, and they don’t know it’s available to them. So hopefully this will mean that more veterans will know they can have this card.’

The announcement comes after criticism of the government’s proposed mandatory digital ID cards, which it hopes to introduce to crack down on migrants working illegally in Britain.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer made the announcement last month, insisting the cards would mean anyone without the right to work in the UK would not be able to find employment.

He said they would also make it easier for the public to access services they are entitled to and reduce benefit fraud and mistakes in welfare schemes. 

The cards are expected to be required for ‘right to work’ checks by the end of this Parliament in 2029.

However, privacy and security issues have been brought up, with some experts questioning whether the cards would offer a new avenue for hackers.

Mr Murray told the Mail that having a digital ID card will not be compulsory: ‘The key thing here, in terms of the whole digital ID policy from government, is that there’ll be no compulsion for you to either have a card, a digital ID. There’ll be no compulsion to show your digital ID.

‘The only use case that’ll be mandatory is what’s currently mandatory, for your ability to prove that you’ve got the right to work in the UK.’

The Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Conservatives have all said that they oppose the implementation of ID card requirements.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: ‘Our veterans have given everything by serving for their country, and it is only right that we give them all the support they need.

‘As we deliver national renewal, we are modernising our public services so they work around people’s lives and keep pace with the digital world we live in.

‘The digital veterans’ card will help remove barriers, reduce red tape and make it easier for people to access the public services they need.’

Minister for Veterans and People, Louise Sandher-Jones, said: ‘Our veterans have given so much in service to our country, and we must ensure they can easily access the support and recognition they are entitled to and deserve.

‘This digital Veteran Card removes barriers and puts convenience back in their hands – whether they’re registering with a new GP, seeking housing support, or simply getting a discount at their local museum.

‘With 1.8 million veterans across the UK now able to benefit from this innovation, we’re making good on our commitment to modernise services for our veteran community.’

What I would like to know is who owns the technology and the app? Who will profit because no one wants this, and there’s no burning need for it, but Starmer is hell bent on pushing it through forcefully.

People have protested in London about migration, our government haven’t taken a blind bit of notice. Nearly three million people have protested about ID cards, again, not a blind bit of notice – what sort of government is this?

I vehemently disagree with the concept of ID cards, particularly for veterans of the armed forces.

The government dragged their heels for years, then some cards were issued, which did nothing other than give discounted coffees and similar.

This is just a vanity project and a waste of taxpayers’ money, and an attempt to monitor everyone. Our government tell us that it will help us access things more easily. However, we still won’t be able to get a doctor’s appointment, and hospitals will still have very long waiting lists, and can you imagine how veterans feel when they sit in their doctors’ waiting room that is full of potentially hostile individuals who would want to do them harm?

We need to keep saying NO to this absurd ID card because it might seem like a good idea right now, but perhaps people won’t think it’s such a good idea when this ID card can determine what you can spend out of your own bank account.

Keir Starmer, did you not see three million people telling you it was an unacceptable idea, which most people don’t want, especially the cost to the taxpayer? I’m sure His Majesty’s forces are wondering why they fought for you and other governments before you. Does Starmer not realise he’s making himself into a monster? Nobody wants him as Prime Minister anymore – it’s time to bail out and resign with some dignity intact.

Secrets Sent To China By Spies

The government published bombshell evidence in the aborted China spy case, demonstrating how a parliamentary aide allegedly passed on secrets to Beijing within hours.

Detailed details on MPs, China-related government policies and the ‘inner workings of the British political system’ were said to be passed on by parliamentary researcher Chris Cash, 30, to his teacher friend Chris Berry, 33, who produced reports for Beijing.

In just 13 hours, Mr Berry was able to produce reports for his Chinese handler, known only as Alex, after receiving parliamentary information from Mr Cash, it was alleged.

Information concerning former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Liz Truss, as well as former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat and Foreign Affairs Select Committee Chair Alicia Kearns MP, was reportedly among the information that was shared.

On June 1, 2022, a message entitled ‘Didn’t hear it from me’ was passed to Beijing, asserting that a vote of no confidence in then Prime Minister Boris Johnson would be initiated in the next few days.

Mr Berry allegedly received a tasking from ‘Alex’ through an encrypted messaging application the next day relating to Mr Johnson stepping down and the implications if Tom Tugendhat were to become prime minister.

Months later, information was passed to China that Mr Tugendhat would almost certainly get a cabinet position from Mr Sunak in exchange for his ‘support on foreign policy matters’, it was said.

Mr Cash allegedly sent a voice note on an encrypted messaging app telling Mr Berry that this information was ‘very off the record’ and that he definitely should not tell his ‘Zhejiang interlocutor’.

On another occasion, Mr Cash is said to have told Mr Berry that Tory leadership contender Jeremy Hunt was likely to pull out of the leadership race and back Mr Tugendhat.

Mr Cash apparently told Mr Berry that this was ‘v v confidential (defo don’t share with your new employer)’.

The information was described as highly beneficial for the Chinese intelligence services, who questioned Mr Berry about each appointment to establish the impact on the government’s China policies.

In his witness statement, Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins said the information would provide China’s advanced details of whom they need not focus intelligence resources on.’

He added: ‘This pre-emptive knowledge may have given the Chinese state an understanding of the likely outcome of the democratic process to choose the leader of the governing political party as well as allowing them to assess to what extent that outcome would affect the UK’s position on China.’

Mr Berry is said to have met with a senior Chinese Communist leader in Hangzhou in July 2022, to the excitement of Mr Cash, who told him: ‘You’re in spy territory now’.

Mr Berry was also accused of producing a report for Beijing stating that a ban on importing products from Xinjiang would likely not come into force until 2023.

Mr Cash allegedly told Mr Berry that, despite public statements to the contrary, the government was not planning to take measures which could harm the prospect of doing business with China.

Mr Cash also allegedly disclosed ‘non-public details’ about the Government, forcing a Chinese-owned firm to sell its 86 per cent stake in the Newport Wafer Fab semiconductor plant in South Wales.

Mr Berry is said to have offered Mr Cash payment in December 2022 if he could provide a report on the ‘level of communication between the UK and US on matters relating to Xinjiang, as well as what specific measures the US and UK would take’.

The files also contained information on the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly’s view on sanctions in respect of the import of products from Xinjiang.

Mr Berry also allegedly told Beijing there was very little interest in pursuing a government-led investigation into Huawei’s role in fixing Russian internet services.

Reviewing the evidence against the pair, Mr Colllins said: ‘From reviewing the exhibits provided to me by SO15 (counter terrorism police), I can see that Mr Berry was tasked by ‘Alex’ to obtain information and analysis about the inner workings of the British political system.

‘Specifically, Mr Berry was tasked to obtain information about topics which were directly or indirectly useful to the Chinese state.’

Mr Collins assessed that the material was highly valuable to China, adding: ‘It is highly unlikely that one of the most senior officials in China would meet with Mr Berry unless the Chinese state considered him to be someone who could obtain valuable information. The short amount of time that Mr Berry was given to provide the requested information and analysis indicates to me that it may have been used to inform real-time decision making.’

In a series of witness statements from February to August this year, Mr Collins said China was ‘the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’, but his evidence fell short of declaring an enemy, which led to the espionage case collapsing in September.

Mr Collins would only say that a ‘wide range of UK government and commercial targets’ had been attacked by ‘advanced persistent threat’ (APT) groups, which had been attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security.

Both suspects had denied charges under the Official Secrets Act, which were dropped on September 15.

Last night, Mr Cash said: ‘I wish to reiterate that I am completely innocent. Not just because the case against me was dropped, but because at no point did I ever intentionally assist Chinese intelligence.

‘As I said to the police when I was arrested, such a suggestion is against everything I stand for. I have, for a long time, been concerned by the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the United Kingdom and, prior to these false allegations, was working to inform parliamentarians and the public about those risks.

‘I have been placed in an impossible position. I have not had the daylight of a public trial to show my innocence, and I should not have to take part in a trial by media.’

The deadline on plans for a new Chinese ‘super embassy’ in London is looming. They should not be permitted to build an embassy in London; it should be declined post haste – no delays, just declined because nothing good will come from having such a close relationship with China.

And why has this all been concealed for so long? This is a clear case of passing information to another person, which is treason. It doesn’t matter if it’s harmless or a threat; it’s passing government information to another person.

Cosying up to dictators does not end well, and this is beyond belief. We cannot have our safety jeopardised, and there must be a swift national inquiry, but we won’t hold our breath for that to happen.

It appears that we have communist sympathisers in our government. Is our government deluded or as thick as mince? This definitely stinks, and Starmer needs to resign, no excuses.

Our schools and universities have become a hotbed of communist and far-left indoctrination and ideology, and I really don’t know how they’ve got away with it, but this is what they’re teaching our children these days. It’s complete and utter madness.

Most people know that nothing good will come from this spying scandal, as our useless government will cover it up, and the cherry on the top will be to grant China its new London embassy, so that it’s even easier to spy on us.

How Diverse Is YOUR Street?

Extremely detailed maps lay bare the demographic make-up of every neighbourhood in England and Wales.

Using figures gathered directly from the 2021 Census, the Daily Mail’s interactive graphics show how many residents identified as White British at that time.

The tool, which requires you to enter your postcode, also reveals the countries from which your neighbours were born and how many couldn’t speak English.

Results are broken down into 7,265 ‘MSOAs’ – pockets of the country home to about 8,000 people.

White Brits were an ethnic minority in 1,000 neighbourhoods, including in parts of Oxford and Milton Keynes. 

In one district of Southall, west London, just 2.1 per cent of people identified as white: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British – with one white Briton for every 31 Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

At the other end of the table came Brotton in Redcar and Cleveland, where 98.3 per cent of residents were white British. Only 92 of 5,400 residents were of another ethnicity.

Divided into even smaller geographical sections called ‘LSOAs’, the Census showed just three white Brits lived in one suburb of Leicester between Highfields and Spinney Hill, merely a mile from the city centre.

Another zone of Leicester topped the nationwide table for having the most foreign–born residents. Some 28 per cent of people in Belgrave South were born abroad. Just behind came a neighbourhood minutes from Wembley Stadium (29.6 per cent).

In Caerphilly, outside Merthyr Tydfil, 98 per cent of residents were born in Britain.

In terms of English speakers, Spinney Hill Road – another MSOA in Leicester – came top. In 2021, 26.5 per cent of people over the age of three whose main language wasn’t English couldn’t speak it well or at all.

For comparison, everyone’s primary language was English, or they could speak it well in one neighbourhood nestled along the Dorset coast and another in Cumbria.

Furthermore, when broken down into LSOAs (there are 35,000–plus in England and Wales), 43 per cent of residents in a location east of Leicester’s city centre spoke little to no English.

Made up of just a dozen streets and 1,670 people, the pocket of North Evington is home to two mosques, a Hindu temple, an infant school and a cinema. It is part of an enclave of 34 districts stretching through Leicester’s North Evington, Belgrave and nearby suburbs, where at least a fifth of the people cannot speak English.

Robert Jenrick’s comments this week have reignited an age-old question – what does multiculturalism actually look like?

On a visit to Handsworth, Birmingham, known for its diverse community, the shadow justice secretary was secretly recorded branding the place a ‘slum’ and complaining of ‘not seeing another white face’.

He stated that it was ‘one of the worst-integrated places’ he’d ever seen, where residents were living ‘parallel lives’.

The claims, which he has since doubled down on, have sparked debate, with some saying the remark is ‘racist’ while others have rallied behind him.

Regardless of the outcome, it has unintentionally raised some important issues in British society.

Has integration worked? Can you still be and feel ‘British’ if you were not born in the UK? If you do not speak the language fluently? If you are not ‘white’?

While Jenrick’s remarks may have been made about Handsworth specifically, there is no place where these questions remain more prevalent than in the melting pot of the UK: Leicester.

Leicester was named one of the UK’s first ‘super-diverse’ cities in 2022 after it was found that more than half its residents were from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Unquestionably, opinions on how effectively communities have blended were divided when the Daily Mail visited the city’s most varied areas this week.

The former textiles capital, which has a lengthy history of welcoming those emigrating from across the world, is 43.4 per cent Asian and 40.9 per cent white, according to the 2021 census.

Additionally, the demographics are much more lopsided in some areas of the city.

In Highfields, one of the most diverse spots in the country, 1,626 out of 1,865 residents were found to be of Indian background, compared with 61 of Pakistani heritage and 48 of Bangladeshi background.

Only three people identified as ‘white British’ – apparently making it the neighbourhood in the UK with the lowest number of white British residents. However, during the visit, the Daily Mail discovered significantly more than three white Britons.

While the inner-city region hosts mosques, churches and temples, it is a predominantly Muslim region.

And on the well-known Narborough Road, which is lined with cuisines from around the world, residents say there is ‘no majority ethnicity’.

The stretch was named the ‘most diverse street in the UK’ in a London School of Economics study, with shops and restaurants from 23 different countries.

On either side of an Indian restaurant is a Romanian shop and a Turkish restaurant, and by the corner is a Lebanese takeaway. Opposite the street is an African restaurant, and at the end of the stretch is a temple sat beside a Pentecostal church.

Cherian Koippuram, 50, moved to Leicester with his family in 2018, having first lived in Swindon after migrating from Kerala, South India.

He runs a unique South Indian and Caribbean fusion restaurant on the vibrant Narborough Road, which is packed to the brim with cuisines across several continents.

Speaking to this publication, he told of how he is proud of how multicultural the area is and says his children have grown up embracing both their Keralan and British backgrounds.

The father-of-three said: ‘It is very multicultural here, there is a Polish shop down to the left, there are lots of Turkish restaurants, African, Indian, lots of different cuisines.

‘Everyone gets along very well here. Narborough Road is known as the food street, so it is full of all cultures. 

‘Everyone loves food, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, so it brings everyone together. We get all kinds of people come here, and all kinds of people live here.

‘There is a Hindu temple here, a Christian church up the road. Within a two-minute walk, you get a Muslim masjid, a Christian church, and a Hindu temple.

‘I wouldn’t say there is any one prominent community here; there is a big mix. We are Christian, but we have a lot of friends who are Muslim, so we make sure all our food is halal.’

Asked about how integrated the different communities are, he said: ‘My children are very proud of the area because of how mixed it is.

‘My son was saying at his school, there is a great respect for each other’s cultures, he is very proud of it.

‘Everyone shares their cultures with each other, they have a culture day where they can come into school in their cultural clothes.

‘He has never been to Egypt, Dubai, other parts of the world, but he knows so much about it. I’m so proud of that.

‘It’s just like in Kerala for me, there is no area where you will find just one people. Everywhere in Kerala, there will be a church, a mosque, a temple. It’s the same here, just the language is different.

‘My kids grow up both British and Indian.

‘They start to absorb our culture from us as they grow up. So now my daughter didn’t used to speak Malayalam, but now she does.

‘They are proud of being Indian and proud of being British.’

When they first took over, Cherian’s restaurant was Caribbean, but when more Keralans moved to Leicester over time, he decided to combine the two cuisines.

‘When we opened, it was a Jamaican place. We had a Jamaican chef, but he has since passed away. We keep the Caribbean food as it was to carry on his legacy, and his friends still come to eat here.

‘The only thing I would say is that the council don’t look after this road. It’s a food place that attracts many visitors, so they should put more effort into it. But they invest very little resources.

‘There should be more cleaning and more police in the area.’

According to the 2021 Census, only 57 per cent of Leicester’s residents were born in England, down from 65 per cent in 2011.

But while many of the street’s shop owners do not originate from England, and many do not speak fluent English, they have built their own lives and businesses in the city, sitting side by side with those of different ethnicities.

Further up Narborough Road, seemingly out of place, sandwiched in the thick of international restaurants, is an old book shop.

Here, 90-year-old Ian Smalley, who has run the shop for 40 years and lives in the flat above, sits waiting to serve the few residents who still browse there.

‘It’s definitely very diverse, but I wouldn’t say it’s integrated as such.

‘Once upon a time, back in the 80s, it was two cultures here, the ancient white culture and the incoming Indian culture. 

‘The Indian Hindu community had come from Africa, having been kicked out by Idi Amin. The two groups got along very well.

‘Back in the day, we would all get together as a community and run a big Diwali festival. But now we haven’t got the mechanism to pull together that sort of thing.

‘Now it’s split between so many different cultures, so there is no central culture or leadership, as it were. 

‘Now we are all very separate, we used to be very integrated, there was more of a sense of community.

‘People did work together and socialise together, but now they tend not to because the communities have become self-sufficient. You don’t get the idea that there’s much collaboration; by and large, we are separating. There isn’t so much community spirit.

‘If you are here a long time, you do see things. 

‘You certainly don’t see the integration anymore. We all live peacefully together, everyone is nice and friendly to each other, but we’re not integrated.

‘I have wondered why, but I don’t know. Now there’s so many different cultures, so it is just harder.

‘Everybody sticks together, the Albanians are all in the Albanian cafe, the Moldovans are all in the Moldovan restaurant.

‘But it’s not a problem, everyone is still friendly and gets along.’

Asked whether there is much of a white population in the area, Smalley, who migrated from Canada in the 80s, said: ‘There are not many of them left.

‘There used to be a large white community. But they have all died or moved away.

‘It’s natural, people move away, go to other places. People trade up; if they can move to a more affluent area, they will.

‘But we love that it is so multicultural. Our only complaint is that many people can’t speak English, but that’s not their fault. If you move here from another country, you can’t expect them to just know the language.’

Asked whether there is still an element of being ‘British’ in the area, he said: ‘No, you couldn’t say it’s very British.

‘You would have to look hard here to find an English flag or anything like that.

‘You couldn’t really say it is British, but they probably cheer for the English football team, and that’s the test, isn’t it.

‘It’s properly international here.’

A glance at the quaint bookstore shows the remains of a society, he says, that was once integrated.

There are depictions of Hindu gods on the walls, which he says are a ‘hangover from the past’, set next to a large poppy.

‘By and large, the Narborough Road people are not really English-speaking people, in terms of reading. They do get by with their English, but they don’t really come to buy books.

‘But bookshops are dying everywhere, it’s not just here.’

Omar Jaber, Arabic, 37, lives behind the bustling Narborough Road, and says the street is one of the most integrated places he knows.

He said: ‘I’ve lived in a lot of areas around the country and there is nowhere like Narborough Road.

‘We get a diverse range of people. I grew up here, so I’m used to it, but I know from people that visit this area that they always notice that there’s a wide variety of places that offer different food and cuisines.

‘And people definitely respect what other people are doing and their cultures.

‘There are a lot of different cultures, but we are still English; there is a sense of being British.

‘It is fully integrated and extremely diverse, probably the most diverse area in Leicester. You will find every ethnicity going.

And if you go to any of the restaurants on a Saturday night, you will get people from all parts of the world dining.’

Westcotes councillor Sarah Russell, which covers Narborough Road, says integration is thriving in her ward.

She said: ‘It is really exciting to live in an area with lots and lots of different communities. Everyone works hard, but they also keep an eye out for one another.

‘My kids always used to say you could eat around the world on Narborough Road.

‘And that opportunity to share in each other’s celebrations, each other’s food, each other’s culture, means they were able to celebrate alongside their friends at school and celebrate being different and being the same.’

Over in Highfields, thought to be home to one of the most diverse communities in the country, one woman told us how she has lived in the area for more than 20 years but feels it is ‘segregated’.

Emma, not her actual name, told of how she feels unsafe as one of few white women in the area.

She has lived in the area for almost 25 years but says it has ‘gone downhill’ over the past decade and feels the area has become ‘segregated’.

She said: ‘It’s absolutely awful living around here. It’s abhorrent. They think it’s culturally diverse, but it’s not. It’s not.

‘I’m all for cultural diversity, but it’s got to the point where if you’re just a white woman, you can’t walk down the street without sexual harassment.

‘I’ve lived here about 25 years, and I’d say the last ten years it’s really gone downhill.

‘There was a time, like for example, 20 years ago, when it was really diverse, lots of different cultures, and everyone would really socialise together.

‘But now it’s just become everyone is in their own cultural group. It should be integrated.

‘As a white woman, there is nowhere here I can go socially. I tried getting a cup of coffee from the cafe there, and I just get pushed out of the way by every man that came in because I am a woman.

‘They don’t want to integrate; they like to be in their own little groups.

‘Some people can be friendly, there are some neighbours on my street who do look out for each other, but that’s becoming less and less and less.

‘If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I’d say yeah, you know it’s a bit scruffy, but it’s alright.

‘But now, it’s very rare you’ll see me walking anywhere. I’ll normally get in my car and drive.

‘I feel like I can’t even walk to work because I’m going to be harassed.

‘I walked to the gym about 6.30 am one morning, and some man said to me in his high-vis “morning”, so I said “morning”, then he goes “oh come in my house, come have sex, my house”. I was just minding my own business walking down the road.

‘That is a regular occurrence. And it’s always certain groups of men, non-English. I don’t want to say a certain race because you can’t tell 100 per cent looking at them, and I don’t like to judge people on their religion or race.

‘But it’s certain groups of men here, and they are never English, that behave like that.

‘I would do anything to leave, but I can’t afford to.’

The woman told the Daily Mail that while the white community in the area has become smaller over the years, her problem lies more with the ‘segregation’ between the different communities.

She said: ‘There are less white people now, it’s less and less, they are moving away. Not just white people, though, people of Caribbean background have become less and less as well.

‘It’s like the schools as well, if you hang around here after school time, you can spot how many English parents come to pick their children up. And I don’t just mean English as in white people, I mean if you listen to how many people are actually talking English.

‘But I don’t care about the number of white people. I don’t care about the colour of people’s skin. It’s how they behave, how they treat people.

‘If you go slightly out, there are areas that are like another world. It’s still very multicultural, but everyone gets along, there is no segregation of different groups.

‘Here, it is very much segregated. It’s the way you are kind of ostracised.

‘If you’re here at 2 pm on a Friday, there’s a mosque down there, they look down their nose like “what is that woman doing out uncovered?”. It’s that kind of thing. I respect other people’s religious views, but that’s their views; it doesn’t have to be mine.’

She said that there is a big drug and prostitution issue in the area, but admitted this was a problem across all communities in the area.

Aysha, 50, has lived in Highfields for 30 years and feels, unlike Emma, that the community is well integrated.

‘There are definitely more Asians in this area, but people have an open mind.

‘My neighbours on either side are Hindu, and we’ve never had any issues.

‘I used to live a few roads down on Haddon Street, and my neighbours were Persian. So yes, it is very mixed.

‘It’s like one big family here.

‘It’s an example of somewhere that multiculturalism has worked well. We don’t just live in our own communities.

‘There aren’t many white families here, compared to when I moved here. The people that used to live here, I think they have passed away, and the kids tend to move out.

‘I think it’s just if you’ve lived here, then you don’t want to move, but the younger people, like my boys who were born here, if they had a choice, they’d move away.

‘I would say it is still British. Everyone still speaks English.

‘A lot of the children don’t know their mother tongue. I’ve got two boys and they hardly speak my language, they only speak English.’

Another local echoed her views: ‘I would say it’s quite integrated, it’s very multicultural.

‘We have all kinds of neighbours of all backgrounds on our street; white, black, Indian, Pakistani…

‘You’ve got mosques, churches, temples, synagogues. I run this fabric shop and get all sorts of customers.

‘There are not many white people, to be honest, but it’s always been like that. I think they prefer to live in a more quiet area, and Highfields is quite busy.’

Naina Par, 55, has lived in Leicester all her life. 

She said: ‘Apart from the drugs and that kind of thing, it’s a safe place.

‘I’m Hindu and this is a Muslim area, but there is never any trouble.

‘Leicester is like that, you’ve got some areas that are Pakistani, this area is mainly Indian Gujarati. Then you have newcomers from Bangladesh.

‘But there is no divide, I’ve never had any grief.

‘You are more likely to have trouble with the drug gangs.

‘Leicester is full of small communities, pockets of different cultures.

‘We’re Indian and we came from Africa to the UK and to Leicester to start up a business in the leather industry.

‘There are only small pockets of white communities. Most white families have moved out. This happened through the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, but I can’t say I know why.’

Speaking outside a local shop, one white Christian man said: ‘Well, you can see for yourself.

‘It feels like people here make an effort to emphasise and show where they are from or what religion they are. 

‘All the women are covered up, and I just saw a group of tiny kids go by, all with their religious hats on. So they make a point of it.

‘I guess it’s human nature that you congregate with people similar to you, who can speak your language, but it takes away the need for integration.

‘There becomes less of a reason to integrate, and everyone begins living in their separate communities.’

Dawood Patel, 78, has lived in the area for over 50 years and disagrees.

He said: ‘It’s very good here, everyone gets along and everyone talks to each other. It doesn’t matter Christian, Muslim or Hindu.

‘I’ve lived here since 1973. I came from India, but this is my home.

‘Everyone can speak in their own languages, everyone can speak Hindi.

‘There used to be white people here everywhere, but now not really. Before houses here used to be £400, now it is going for £300,000. So they are moving away, they are going abroad.

‘But I think it is a very good place to live.’

At the local family-run pharmacy on Eggington Street, Sandeep Shah, 56, told the Daily Mail: ‘It is fairly integrated here, but people also have their strong cultural backgrounds they hold on to.

‘People who are able to speak English are able to mingle more easily and understand more cultural differences. They tend to be more willing to accept other cultures and learn.

‘But everyone here respects each other’s ethnicities and religions.

‘They just also have their own strong values, so the adaptability eventually goes down.

His son Rushabh Shah, 30, added: ‘It is as integrated as you can get. 

‘We get native British people, Indians, Bangladeshi, Pakistanis, Eastern Europeans, West Indians, Arabic people, and they all get along.

‘A lot of people don’t speak English, so it helps when our staff can speak different languages like Hindi and Gujarati.

‘In general, in terms of socialising, some people do struggle sometimes because there is a language barrier.  

‘But there is still a lot of intermingling in the communities and everybody knows everyone.’

There are undoubtedly some streets and occasionally even places where no white faces are present, and as for social housing, there is no room for homeless veterans who once had priority.

This isn’t diversity – it’s dangerous!

7 July 2005: 52 murdered in Islamist bomb attacks
22 May 2013: Murder of Lee Rigby by 2 Islamist terrorists
16 June 2016: Murder of Jo Cox MP by a white nationalist terrorist
22 May 2017: 22 people were murdered in an Islamist bomb attack
3 June 2017: 8 people murdered in an Islamist London Bridge van attack
19 June 2017: 1 murdered in a far-right terrorist van attack
29 June 2019: 2 murdered in an Islamist stabbing near London Bridge
20 June 2020: 3 murdered in an Islamist stabbing in Reading
15 October 2021: Murder of David Amess MP by an Islamist
2 October 2025: 2 Jewish worshippers killed by an Islamist

And that is just the UK.

Our nation’s takeover has been ongoing for a very long time and is likely irreversible or unstoppable at this point. Sadly, I no longer recognise England, but what can we do about it?

At this rate, white British England will become extinct.

We have been invaded in plain sight, yet our government does remarkably little about it.

This is what they mean when they say ‘diverse’ – what they really mean is ‘no whites.’

Londoners who were born there, it’s part of their soul. The pollution, the explosion of life in the sixties, and now it’s heartbreaking to see the once great boroughs like Bermonsey, Peckham, Hackney, and other areas vanish and transform into the land of vacant commercial premises and fried chicken shops, et cetera.

The great housing developments built by the Guinness foundation, Peabody and the London Guilds that were built for worker families of London are now filled with strangers from foreign lands, and I weep for our once great city and its banter – it’s a disgrace, even a tragedy, and it should have never happened.

Prince William’s Heartbreaking Tears Of Compassion

It was a Royal tradition meticulously observed for decades – members of the Firm should always preserve a ‘stiff upper lip’ and avoid any public displays of emotion.

Yet Prince William, who tragically lost his dear mother, Princess Diana, at just 15 years old, has made a conscious decision to break away from this archaic mould.

His deliberate embrace of emotion has now been showcased by new, heartbreaking footage of the future King brought to tears as he spoke to a grieving mother whose husband took his own life just days after their one-year-old son passed away. 

In a profoundly moving conversation to observe World Mental Health Day, the Prince of Wales’s voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut as Rhian Mannings told him how she desperately wished her late husband, Paul, had spoken to her about how he was feeling.

‘I think that’s what the hardest thing is… we would have been OK,’ she said.

William’s disdain for the Royal stoicism, however, is not unusual. Instead, it has a striking resemblance to the compassion of his late mother and has also been accepted by several other Royals in their hour of greatest need.

Typically referred to as the ‘People’s Princess’, Diana became loved globally for her extraordinary ability to connect with people and her heartwarming kindness.

When the Princess of Wales visited Ashworth Hospice in Liverpool in 1992, she became overcome with emotion, with powerful shots showing her fighting back tears as she left the building.

However, while she was no doubt moved by her visit, the events surrounding that day were subsequently suggested to have had a profound impact on her outward tears.

The visit came just days after Andrew Morton’s incendiary book, Diana: Her True Story, was published to the world, in which Diana herself described her mental health struggles and indeed the breakdown of her marriage to King Charles.

Last year, former Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter, who worked for the Royal Family from 1998 to 2000, revealed that Diana had experienced acute anxiety surrounding the press coverage of the book, which sold more than five million copies that year.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he recalled: ‘Diana called me at 5 am asking what she should do, and I told her it couldn’t be undone now.’

He also advised the Princess to keep a low profile ahead of her visit to Ashworth Hospice, adding: ‘[I told her to] just to keep schtum, not answer her phone, and I would accompany her on her next engagement two days later to keep people at bay.’

Then, in December of the following year, Diana was photographed arriving for a gala concert at The Equinox in Leicester Square, appearing distraught once more.

The late Princess declared her retirement from formal responsibilities a month later. The breakup of her marriage to King Charles was to be the culmination of a year that was extremely emotional.

Now, more than 40 years on, Diana’s son seems to have echoed his dear mother’s human touch and understanding spirit.

When a young Prince William, accompanied by his 12-year-old brother Harry, walked behind their mother’s coffin following her tragic death, the grieving young boys never surrendered to their emotions publicly and seemed remarkably composed.

In an interview conducted in 2023, Prince Harry announced that both he and William were unable to display any emotion when they met the expansive sea of mourners who had assembled at Kensington Palace to commemorate Diana.

In a clip from ITV’s Harry: The Interview, he told presenter Tom Bradby: ‘Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment’.

But when William spoke to grieving Ms Mannings about her late husband, Paul, at her home in Cardiff in an interview broadcast this week, his feelings were laid bare as the Prince struggled to conceal his anguish during their devastating discussion.

At one point, Ms Mannings, who lost her husband to suicide just five days after their one-year-old son George passed away, gently asked the Royal: ‘Are you OK?’

Nodding his head and holding her hand, the Prince responded: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just it’s hard to ask these questions that I… ‘

‘No, it’s fine. It’s just you’ve got children,’ Mrs Mannings told him gently.

‘I know, I know… It is…’ the royal trailed off.

‘It’s hard… And you’ve experienced loss yourself,’ she reassured him.

‘It’s ok,’ William responded.

‘Life can throw you these awful curve balls, but by talking about it, you know, having hope, you can continue,’ she added.

William, who by now has managed to pull himself together, agreed, saying: ‘The best way to prevent suicide is to talk about it. Talk about it early, talk about it with your loved ones, those you trust, your friends. So thank you for talking about it.’

Like father, like son, King Charles has also appeared to have become less fearful about showcasing his real emotions publicly in recent years. 

An extremely striking image displayed a visibly emotional King Charles watching from the Royal Box after his horse, named ‘Desert Hero’, bred by the late Queen, won the King George V Stakes at the Royal Ascot in 2023. 

The King appeared to brush away a tear as he watched his first win as monarch – and the first without his beloved mother. He also appeared to find it hard to control his emotions as he collected the trophy, knocking it over as Camilla looked on. 

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said that the win had been a ‘deeply emotional experience’ for Charles because it was ‘an event which his mother loved so much’. 

Then, this summer, King Charles was again moved to tears by the powerful first-hand testimony of VJ veterans as they spoke at a service of remembrance to honour 80 years since the end of the Second World War.

Charles and Camilla seemed to be visibly emotional after Captain Yavar Abbas went ‘briefly off-script’ to salute ‘my brave King’ for attending despite ongoing cancer treatment.

The 104-year-old said that he himself had been ‘rid of it for 25 years and counting’, before reading an excerpt from his war diary, which he penned while serving in the 11th Sikh regiment of the British Indian Army.

Although Camilla’s eyes were red with tears, the guests applauded his remarks.

Certainly, while the ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality has traditionally been adopted by the royals in the face of personal loss, the King has been a lot more open in sharing his emotions, particularly following the death of his mother, body language expert Judi James previously told The Mail.

‘The Queen led the country through the war, where stoicism and emotional resilience might have been vital for survival,’ Judi told FEMAIL.

‘Charles has inherited a country coming out of an epidemic and also a country much more in touch with the subject of mental health, meaning emotional displays might create empathy with his public.’ 

Clearly, Queen Camilla also seems to have embraced a departure from the traditional stoicism generally favoured historically.

She was observed crying last year as a D-Day veteran courageously described the tragedy of losing his best friend on the Normandy beaches.

Charles and Camilla joined the Prince of Wales, leading UK politicians and veterans at a major event in Portsmouth, where the King gave his first public address since being diagnosed with cancer.

He told the crowd: ‘The stories of courage, resilience and solidarity we have heard today and throughout our lives cannot fail to move us, to inspire us and to remind us of what we owe to that great wartime generation.’

The first time the late Queen Elizabeth II cried in public was on December 11, 1997, in Portsmouth, when her beloved HMY Britannia was decommissioned.

For royal observers, who had grown so used to her stern demeanour, it was a startling sight.

Dressed in an all-red ensemble, a photo from the event shows Her Majesty brushing a tear from her cheek as she said goodbye to her luxury yacht when the costs of the ageing vehicle became too great to maintain.

The Monarch had been the target of intense public criticism only a month earlier for keeping a tight-lipped stance after the passing of Princess Diana, her former daughter-in-law.

While the Queen seldom put a foot wrong during her 70-year reign, her response to Diana’s demise the week before was one of the rare episodes most experts now view as a mistake.

Later, Tony Blair took credit for convincing the Queen to come back to London and honour the princess in public, meeting the public’s demand.

Historian Dominic Sandbrook said of Blair’s intervention: ‘He understood this, the new sentimentalism that this wasn’t a sort of stiff-upper-lip 1950s country anymore.

‘That was the sort of ritual display of empathy, which he was very good at, and the Queen wasn’t very good at, that was an important part of our political culture that’s becoming.’

In keeping with a shift towards more displays of public compassion, the late Queen also showed deep sadness on Remembrance Sunday in 2002.

Tears were seen gathering on the Monarch’s cheeks when she visited the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

Sat alongside the then Duchess of Cornwall and Duchess of Cambridge, the Queen was overwhelmed by emotion during the service, where she and other members of the Royal Family paid their respects to those who had fallen in the service of war efforts.

The 2002 event was poignant for the royal as she took on her late mother’s role at the ceremony, held in memory of Britain’s war heroes.

Her Majesty was also seen brushing away a tear almost two decades later during the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph in 2019.

Public displays of emotion are also not an unfamiliar concept to Kate, Princess of Wales, who in 2023 was captured becoming extremely teary while watching Tunisia’s Jabeur take on the Czech Republic’s Markéta Vondrousova for the Venus Rosewater Dish at Wimbledon.

Throughout the match, the royal, who is a huge tennis fan and also patron of the All England Club, cheered, applauded and grinned as the Czech player became the first-ever unseeded Grand Slam champion.

Kate also seemed to empathise with Jabeur, who was openly crying after losing the match – her second Wimbledon final loss in a row.

And the princess, too, wiped tears from her eyes as she watched the conclusion of the match from the Royal Box.

When Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away early at Windsor Castle in April 2021, aged 99, his funeral service had to be scaled down due to coronavirus restrictions. 

Of the 30 mourners who gathered to commemorate the late Philip at St George’s Chapel, there was one extremely touching moment captured in the pews – his beloved granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, was seen fighting back tears.

Looked up to as the patriarch of his family, Prince Philip became a mentor for younger royals who continued to turn to him over the years and was said to have shared a close bond with all of his grandchildren.

Beatrice was so overcome with sorrow in a heartbreaking moment that was recorded during the memorial service that she had to conceal her teary face with the order of service. This gave her a quick opportunity to gather herself away from the cameras.

Following the death of Prince Philip, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, broke down in tears as she opened up about his sad demise during an emotional BBC interview.

Becoming extremely tearful when discussing her dear father-in-law, the Duchess said that the late Duke of Edinburgh’s passing had left a ‘giant-sized hole in our lives’ during an interview with Naga Munchetty at St James’s Palace in June of the same year.

In 2014, the Duchess cried when she returned to Frimley Park Hospital and reunited with the midwife who saved her life during her terrifying delivery to Lady Louise in 2003.

The Duchess, then 38, had suffered an acute placental abruption and was reportedly just 15 minutes away from dying in the emergency room, with her husband Edward unable to attend because he was in Mauritius for an official visit.

However, she managed to give birth to Louise, who weighed just 4lb 9oz, after an emergency C-section, but she had to be moved away from Sophie almost immediately for specialist care.

Complications from her early birth left Lady Louise with esotropia – a condition which means that both eyes do not look in the same direction – and reportedly ‘completely reshaped’ her mother’s personality.

The Duchess wept as she met the Head of Midwifery, Ms Price, who was attending the delivery of both her children.

She said: ‘I want to say well done to everyone for your fundraising and for all the work you do to help thousands of families – your service is the difference between life and death.’

When the late Queen tragically passed away aged 96 in September 2022, the world watched with bated breath to see how the Royal Family would publicly react to the death of the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

Following the State funeral at Westminster Abbey, Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was seen to be extremely upset at the Committal Service in Windsor. She even had a trail of tears visible on her cheek, and as thousands of mourners lay flowers outside of Balmoral Castle to pay their respects and commemorate the late Queen, Zara Tindall also seemed visibly emotional as she tearfully surveyed the sea of tributes.

Likewise, for Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, maintaining a traditional Royal face of endurance proved almost impossible during the funeral of his wife of 64 years, the Duchess of Kent, held at Westminster Cathedral last month.

While the 89-year-old put on a dignified and sombre display as he strode behind the coffin, one special picture poignantly caught the anguish on the Duke’s face as he watched his wife’s coffin being carried away by pallbearers. 

After the image of the Duke circulated online, it was followed by an extraordinary outpouring of empathy, as people sent their most profound condolences to the Royal Family while expressing how sorrowful the image made them feel. 

It seems that gone are the days of the Royals driving an emotional space between the people and the Royal Family, as they instead strive to showcase that emotions can and should be assumed. 

Indeed, as Prince William himself once stressed, while the British stiff upper lip can be ‘great’ and sometimes required ‘when times are really hard’, a balance, as was so poignantly demonstrated by the late Princess Diana. 

‘We’ve got to relax a little bit and be able to talk about our emotions because we’re not robots, ‘ the future King said during a frank discussion caught in a BBC documentary, A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health.

He is a compassionate man who makes an excellent husband, parent, and future king.

Princess Diana described how the young Prince William would comfort her by pushing tissues under the bathroom door and saying, ‘It will be alright, mummy, it will be alright. I’ll look after you,’ when she cried after arguments with Prince Charles.

This anecdote emphasises the close bond she shared with her son and the complicated emotional burden she bore.

A strong monarch protects and empowers his subjects because he knows that leading them to a future of harmony and prosperity will be his greatest legacy, not controlling them. When the time comes, William will be a great king.

They’re Watching You!

Britain is said to have the most closely watched nation in the world when it comes to closed-circuit television systems.

In 2013, it was estimated that four to six million CCTV cameras were filming the nation, and in London, the public can expect to be caught up to 300 times a day on camera.

We are being told that this is for our own protection, that it’s used to keep watch on possible terrorist activity, and for public criminality too, as footage is frequently used as evidence in court, but questions need to be answered about this technology and who controls the captured data.

I believe people should be concerned. There’s definitely a lot of monitoring going on.

Surveillance technology hit the headlines when it was revealed that a security firm in a development in London’s Kings Cross was using facial recognition technology (FRT) on CCTV camera footage of the public.

The cameras, said the security firm Argent, use a number of detection and tracking techniques, including facial recognition, but also have sophisticated systems in place to safeguard the privacy of the general public. This is a serious and widespread concern over the legality of these programs and what is done with the data gathered.

It’s now been said that this technology is potentially going to be used by the Barbican Centre and in a central London shopping district, too.

Our right to privacy is violated by the intrusive nature of facial recognition technologies. It has the potential to drastically change our public areas by requiring us to keep an eye on who we are with and where we go, therefore threatening our right to free speech.

Facial recognition represents an inherent threat to our rights and has no business on our streets.

Digital manipulation and deepfakes, which include editing photos and videos to depict something that never happened, are now another problem. Now the camera can deceive us, and we have seen the technology is there to manipulate, as with Nancy Pelosi’s doctored speech that was tweeted by Donald Trump, so could it be used on CCTV footage as well?

There is undoubtedly the technology to accomplish this, and as artificial intelligence advances, it will get easier and easier. It might become a problem in a short period of time, in my opinion.

As we know, with social media, technology advances faster than laws or regulations, and perhaps we are right to be paranoid about what the lenses trained on our civil liberties actually mean. Unlike social media, however, there’s no way of switching them off.

Hardly a week goes by without a new warning about the possible horrors of facial recognition, deep fakes or fake news.

It’s often said that the camera never lies, but that’s not true – anything can be faked, and now we have the continued growth of the use of video surveillance systems across public and private sectors, and it’s now becoming acceptable in society.

We now see smart doorbells, wireless cameras and closed-circuit television (CCTV), which now continues to evolve into more complex artificial intelligence (AI) which collects our data.

How the technology is used also continues to evolve. This includes connected databases utilising Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) or the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in public spaces.

They frequently process a lot of people’s personal information for security, crime prevention, or other specific uses like digital advertising. Some of these applications, nevertheless, may be quite invasive, particularly if processing occurs without the subject’s awareness.

We are one step closer to 1984, or maybe we are past that. Joseph Stalin would have been impressed.

They know where your car is at any given moment; now they want to know where you are and what you’re doing. Some will say that if you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the problem? But in a state where you get banged up for a tweet, who knows what is right or wrong these days?

If you didn’t see this coming, then you weren’t paying attention!

This is why our government are importing criminals by the thousands because once insecurity and violence reach critical mass, they will impose these draconian measures they planned all along.

People demonstrated this during the pandemic, and they were ready to give their freedom for safety, and it will happen again.

And those saying it’s okay because they won’t break the law, forget how easy it is for our government to enforce unjust laws, and just because it’s the law does not make it right.

What are you going to do when you can’t leave your house without leave? Or travel more than 10 miles from your address? Or use your car. Eat that steak you really fancy, buy whatever you want, withdraw more than £100, watch that video because it uses too much electricity. I could go on!

Tory Towers Over Kemi Badenoch

Britain’s tallest Tory became the unlikely star of this year’s Conservative Party Conference – even meeting leader Kemi Badenoch after her barnstorming address.

Standing at 7ft 2in, James McAlpine towered over the 5ft 4in Tory leader as she thanked him for being ‘our tallest member’ at the conference in Manchester today.

The 22-year-old Oxford Brookes University student drew extra attention from fellow attendees thanks to his significant stature and even sat near the front for Ms Badenoch’s closing speech.

Mr McAlpine, who has been a Conservative member for four years but was attending his first party conference, said he thought the Tory leader’s speech was ‘fantastic’.

‘She’s got my full support. She’s fantastic, she’s in touch with the young Conservatives, and she’s a brilliant leader,’ he told the Mail.

‘And with the removing of stamp duty, I just think that’s fantastic. Because it’s going to help absolutely everybody, whether you’re buying your first home, buying a new family home and also for the older generations as well who are looking to move somewhere smaller.’

Before pursuing a career in politics, Mr McAlpine, who is earning a BA in business management, wishes to obtain practical experience working in finance in the city.

He said he ‘would love to be’ a Conservative councillor and eventually an MP, adding: ‘I’m not going to say leader just yet.’

If his dreams are realised, Mr McAlpine – whose mother is 6ft 5in and his late father was 6ft 9in – would break the Guinness World Record for the tallest politician.

The present world record holder is US Republican Jon Godfread, who stands at just over 6ft 10in, while the tallest Tory is former MP Daniel Kawczynski, who is 6ft 9in.

Mr McAlpine said he has a ‘love-hate’ relationship with the attention he receives due to his height, but believes it gives him a ‘platform’ to speak up for what he believes in.

‘I don’t adore it, but I also I don’t hate it,’ he said. ‘Because I think it’s given me a voice and I’m able to speak up and represent the Conservative Party.’

Asked whether he receives attention at university from other students for his political views, Mr McAlpine said: ‘It’s mostly been my about my height, never really my political views.

‘But I think when I go back tomorrow, things might change.’

The proud ‘Tory boy’ is a huge horse racing fan and has also become a social media celebrity after partying his way around high society events such as the Cheltenham Festival, where his interviews have lured millions of views.

He said: ‘Labour just want to ban anything that people enjoy doing, starting with the tax on farming, horse racing and the cost of shotgun licencing going up.’

Hopefully, this won’t just be another Tory with his head in the clouds. However, I think there might be high hopes for this fellow, pardon the pun.

And he could always pursue a career in basketball if he doesn’t succeed in politics. He really doesn’t need a platform; he’s already got one, and he certainly looks like he’s on his way up.

However, on a more sober note, being tall, everything must seem so small to him and pose challenges at times, but no doubt he rises above it.

POLICE OFFICER FOUND GUILTY

A British Transport Police (BTP) officer who grabbed a teenage fare dodger by the throat and put her in a headlock has been found guilty of assault by beating. 

CCTV footage shows Adrian Young, 48, violently restraining the 15-year-old girl by holding her in a headlock for 30 seconds. 

In September of last year, PC Young was shown on camera pulling the girl back through the ticket barrier, gripping her throat, and throwing her against a machine at Camden Road Underground station.

Afterwards, he handcuffed and arrested the girl before de-arresting her at the scene. 

A member of the public who witnessed the attack made a complaint, and the incident was referred to the IOPC. 

The Crown Prosecution Service received a file of evidence from the IOPC, and today at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, PC Young was found guilty.

He will be sentenced on November 13.

At the end of the IOPC investigation, it found he should also face a gross misconduct hearing for allegedly breaching the police standards of professional behaviour.

To further the disciplinary process, they will collaborate with BTP.

Assistant Chief Constable Sean O’Callaghan said: ‘I’d like to be absolutely clear that the actions of PC Young during this incident were appalling, demonstrating a completely unnecessary and unacceptable use of force against a child, which has seen him be convicted of assault today.

‘Police officers are rightly expected to maintain control of any situation, and by not doing so, PC Young has undermined public confidence in BTP and the high standards we hold our officers to every day.

‘We thank the IOPC for their investigation and will be looking to progress with internal disciplinary proceedings as soon as possible.’

IOPC Director Emily Barry said: ‘All police officers are trained to use force that is necessary, proportionate and reasonable in the circumstances. On this occasion, there was no lawful reason for the force used by PC Young, which could have resulted in serious injuries, particularly as he was dealing with a child who was considerably smaller than him.

‘The incident was witnessed by several members of the public who expressed concerns at the scene about the officer’s actions, with one of the witnesses making a complaint to BTP that ultimately led to us carrying out an independent investigation.

‘This shows that the public can have confidence in the police complaints system and that the IOPC will hold officers to account for their actions, with PC Young now convicted of a criminal offence.’

Police morale must be at an all-time low, and it appears that the lunatics are taking over the asylum.

The young girl was fare dodging, not robbing the Bank of England. It wasn’t the heist of the century.

In the UK, police personnel are typically not allowed to employ headlocks because they must be used in extreme circumstances that are appropriate for the threat being faced.

The use of force must be reasonable, and officers are trained to avoid ‘chokeholds’ or ‘stangle-holds’ because they are dangerous.

If used, it must be minimal, temporary, and monitored carefully to ensure the person’s airway and breathing are not obstructed.

There is a whole spectrum between ‘strangle a child’ and ‘appropriate force’. This was not ‘appropriate force.’

Labour Accused Of Developing A Surveillance State

Children as young as 13 could be forced to have digital ID cards under ‘sinister’ strategies to expand the role of the state in people’s lives.

A petition against digital ID signed by nearly three million people has been ignored by ministers who promised to press ahead with imposing them before the election.

In a formal response, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the government would introduce ID cards for everyone aged 16 and over by the time of the next election.

And, in a significant extension of the scheme, the department said ministers will now consult on bringing in so-called ‘Brit Cards’ for children as young as 13.

The response also indicates that the scheme will extend far beyond the original proposal to tackle illegal working, with ID cards potentially required to access an expansive range of public services.

It states that digital ID will eventually become people’s ‘boarding pass to government’.

Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said digital ID was ‘fast becoming a digital permit required to live our everyday lives’.

She added: ‘Starmer has sold his Orwellian digital ID scheme to the public on the lie that it will only be used to stop illegal working, but now the truth, buried in the small print, is becoming clear.

‘We now know that digital IDs could be the backbone of a surveillance state and used for everything from tax and pensions to banking and education.

‘The prospects of enrolling even children into this sprawling biometric system is sinister, unjustified and prompts the chilling question of just what he thinks the ID will be used for in the future.

‘No one voted for this, and millions of people who have signed the petition against it are simply being ignored.’

Conservative MP Greg Smith warned that the scale of the government’s plans had ‘sinister implications for the future’.

‘Digital ID opens up a Pandora’s Box for big state, intrusive government,’ he said. ‘This raises big questions about what they might be used for in the future. Why on earth are they suggesting children need them? Could they be told to produce them to go to school?

‘We risk ending up with a situation where the law-abiding majority face more state interference in their lives while the illegal migrants, who this is supposedly aimed at, carry on ignoring the rules as they do at the moment.’

Sir Keir Starmer defended the plan, saying the government could not ‘shirk’ from tackling illegal immigration.

Speaking at a press conference in Mumbai, the Prime Minister said: ‘On digital ID, let me be really clear – we have made a commitment to do whatever we can to stop people arriving illegally in the UK. One of the issues is the ability people have to work in our economy illegally. We have to do something about that – we can’t shirk that. We had a strong manifesto commitment to deal with it.

‘The vast majority of people in the UK wants it gripped and we need to therefore take the measures necessary to grip it.’

Sir Keir said digital ID would also trigger ‘great benefits’ for the public in speeding up access to public services.

A public petition stating ‘Do not introduce digital ID cards’ has now been signed by more than 2.8 million people and will be discussed by MPs in the forthcoming weeks.

The government’s response states that the system will be introduced before the next election, with people required to produce their digital ID when they take a new job to demonstrate they have the right to work in this country.

It implies that the document will probably be required in the future to access a variety of government services, such as filing taxes and receiving benefits.

‘People in the UK already know and trust digital credentials held in their phone wallets to use in their everyday lives, from paying for things to storing boarding passes,’ the response states. ‘The new system will be built on similar technology and be your boarding pass to government.’

The response, however, maintains that the police cannot require anyone to present a digital ID card and that not having one will not be a crime.

This is going to happen whether we like it or not. Once digital IDs are introduced, it might be implemented slowly, but then it will become more stringent, where if you don’t have an ID card to produce, you will be excluded from society.

Everything our government does is a scamdemic. It’s like a trial run to see what the sheep will put up with.

Even on our computers, when we go onto some web pages. You are asked by a robot to verify that you are human! And we just go along with it like bleating sheep.

What people don’t realise is that all this data already exists in the background and has done ever since digitisation occurred with the spread of computers. We should have probably put our foot down then, but people just didn’t realise until it was too late.

At the moment, data exists, but cannot be used to restrict your normal life or hinder basic human rights. With digital ID, we will have no rights based upon whatever fashionable algorithm there is that week, because what will be acceptable one week will not be the following week. Not only that, your data can and will be easily hacked.

This is all extremely creepy, and it’s so obvious what they’re attempting to achieve. What has become of this once great country? It is so sad, especially as some still seem to be so oblivious to it, particularly the younger generation with no life experience, who are getting their information from TikTok, et cetera.

Digital IDs are just a dystopian way of controlling your life, and it will be the cage that you live in!

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